Here's a Dutch psychological thriller that is one of the classics of the genre. It was also the premiere cinematic success for director George Sluizer.

Historical Background: George Sluizer was born on June 25th, 1932, in Paris France. He learned about filmmaking as an assistant to such legendary directors as Sacha Guitry, Bert Haanstra, and Michael Anderson. In the early sixties, Sluizer began directing and producing documentaries for television, including some for the National Geographic Society, many having to do with travel in Brazil or Europe. He also made some shorts during this time period. In the seventies, Sluizer also began making feature films, including Love and Music (1971), Joao (1972), and Twice a Woman (1979).

Sluizer's most famous film, by a wide margin, is the present one, Spoorloos (1985), called The Vanishing in English-language countries. Oddly enough, Sluizer later directed a remake of his masterpiece for Hollywood, also called The Vanishing (1993), starring Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland, and Sandra Bullock. In this particular instance, the remake is not merely less good, it is downright awful, so you want to be particular about which version you rent or acquire. The original is a fine film. It is not commonplace for directors to remake their own films (though a few have done so) and even less commonplace for the remakes to be so much worse than the original. The fault for the dismal remake does not lie entirely with Sluizer, however. He was saddled with a rewritten script with an insipid ending.

Since 1993, Sluizer has directed Crimetime (1996), Dying to Go Home (1996), The Commissioner (1998), and The Stone Raft (2002), but none of these films have duplicated the international success of the original Dutch version of The Vanishing.

The Story: The basic premise of this film is simple and yet profoundly riveting. An attractive pair of young lovers from Amsterdam, Rex (Gene Bervoets) and Saskia (Johanna ter Steege), are headed for a sunny vacation in France. As they ride along, they engage in playful word games and repartee, while driving the scenic route through mountainous terrain. Rex carelessly ignores the plummeting gas gauge and the car comes to a halt in the middle of a dark tunnel that runs through a mountainous outcropping. It's a hazardous situation and the pair is in a panic. Saskia insists on scrounging through the luggage for the flashlight while Rex is intent on getting out of the car as quickly as possible, fearing that another vehicle might plow into it. Finally, in exasperation, Rex abandons the car and Saskia, taking the gas can to find a filling station. When he returns, Saskia is gone. After putting the gas into the car and reaching the end of the tunnel, Rex finds Saskia waiting at the side of the road, flashlight in hand. The couple spends the next few hours "making up." Saskia makes Rex promise to never abandon her again, which he is more than happy to do.

At a rest area, the two are fully reconciled by the time Saskia goes to buy a couple of drinks while Rex finishes fueling their car. After filling the gas tank, Rex pulls the car into a nearby parking spot and waits. He waits, and he waits. Saskia never returns. After a reasonable waiting time and a bit more to demonstrate his patience with his girlfriend, Rex goes looking for her. At first he only checks the obviously places. He leaves a note on the car in case she returns before he does. He checks the less obvious places, including the lady's room and men's room. He involves the station manager and wants to notify the police, but is rightly advised that the police will take no interest until and unless Saskia is missing for a day or so, assuming until then that a domestic quarrel is involved.

The film now takes a most extraordinary turn. Instead of continuing to follow Rex's turmoil, we turn to the backstory of the killer. This is not a classic who-done-it kind of thriller. Viewers learn almost immediately the identity of the psychopath. He is Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), a seemingly mild-mannered and good-natured chemistry professor and a beloved family man, with a wife, Simone (Bernadette Le Saché), and two daughters, Gabrielle (Lucille Glenn) and Denise (Tania Latarjet). The man is, for all appearances, a solid, upright citizen. He calmly tells his wife that he is probably the only man in France who can proudly boast of never having known another woman.

Beneath that immaculate exterior, however, the man has a morbid and venal preoccupation with defeating predestination. As a boy, he had once jumped from a second story balcony, breaking an arm and losing two fingers. He had motivated himself to do so by imagining that it was predestined that he could not jump. He did so, in a sense, to triumph over fate. Later, as a married adult, Raymond had saved a child from drowning, winning the admiration of his own family for his heroism. It had then occurred to him that a hero could not also be a villain and since it seemed fated to be so, he had to prove himself capable of great villainy. He had set out with all the careful, methodical logic of a good scientist to prove that he could forcibly abduct a woman. He had carefully practiced tactics for luring a woman into his car, applying chloroform, and calculating the relationship between the dose applied and how long she would be comatose. He had carefully monitored his pulse rate with each practice session until he could carry out the necessary steps calmly.

Three years pass by after Saskia's disappearance. Viewers discover that Rex continues to devote his life to searching for her. In fact, he is utterly obsessed. He makes television appearances, hangs posters everywhere, and follows up numerous leads that arrive in the mail. Rex has a new girlfriend, Lieneke (Gwen Eckhaus), who loves him and is devoted to him, but, in the end, she realizes that she would always be playing second fiddle to Saskia's ghost. Rex truly appreciates Lieneke and wants to be worthy of her devotion, but cannot resist his own obsession with finding out what happened to Saskia. After all, the last thing he had said to her is that he would never abandon her again.

The plot thickens when Raymond is moved by Rex's dogged determination, which Raymond observes through newspaper articles about and television appearances by poor Raymond. Raymond begins sending postcards to Rex, suggesting that they meet, but each time Raymond fails to show up. Finally, when Rex is alone, Raymond makes contact. Rex realizes immediately that Raymond is no fraud since Raymond is in possession of the car keys he took from Saskia. Raymond makes Rex an extraordinary offer. If Rex will accompany him to France, Raymond will reveal to him what happened to Saskia. Raymond has taken care to ensure that Rex will have no substantive evidence against him should Rex instead opt to go to the authorities.

That is the film's set-up and it's as far as I'll go in revealing the story's progression. The rest is a gripping psychological thriller with an ending that will leave you guessing right up to the finish and rehashing for days thereafter.

Themes: One of the most unusual features of this film is that the criminal is intellectually engaged in the planning and conduct of his crime but is emotionally disengaged. This is contrary to viewer expectation. We refer to crimes such as murder, assault, and rape as "crimes of passion" precisely because they always emanate from intense emotion, whether an outburst or a long-standing gripe. We generally hope and expect that man's capacity for reason, housed in the brain's cerebrum, will hold violent emotions in check. Here, however, we have a passionless "crime of passion" committed for intellectual and philosophical reasons. We sometimes observe so-called "caper" crimes in which the perpetrators methodically plan the crime down to the last detail, but such crimes are invariably based on greed and designed for personal gain. Caper crimes are usually expressly intended to minimize the necessity for violence, which the criminals will reluctantly undertake only if it becomes necessary. One could argue that Raymond's mindset is therefore unrealistic. The closest real life equivalents to dispassionate crimes of violence, actually, are politically motivated activities or those directed by the head of a large criminal organization. Kings, dictators, presidents, secretaries of defense, and mafia dons sometimes coolly calculate the advantages of a violent initiative that will then be carried out by armies, police forces, missiles, or henchmen. Neither Vito Corleone nor Donald Rumfield has to get emotionally aroused to order a political assassination, a raid, or to authorize use of torture. They seldom actually see, first hand, the horrors that they initiate.

On Rex's side of the ledger, the poor man was done in by his obsession to know. I applaud his tenacity in so far as it was based on loyalty to Saskia and as long as there remained any reasonable likelihood that he might find her alive and save her. I do not respect his obsessive need to know what happened. That part is catering to his own needs and came at the expense of any potential for finding peace of mind, happiness, and a relationship with Lieneke. Rex is initially victimized by the crime, but then becomes a victim of his own personality defect.

Production Values: The screenplay was written by Tim Krabbe, based on his own novel, The Golden Egg. The film's pacing is superb. The plot unfolds in a clever elliptical manner. The very ordinariness of the early travel scene and the family life of the villain add to the sense of horror that emanates from what follows. It is very rare for thrillers or horror films to invest as much time in the psychology and life of the psychopath as does this film. We see the crime from two separate points of view: that of the victims and than of the criminal. It's not that we acquire sympathy for the criminal but we gain an appreciation for the arbitrariness of his actions.

The cinematography is never less than functional and sometimes a good deal better than that. There are some beautiful shots near the opening of the rural French landscape and a fetching village scene later with a roadside café. There's a nice surreal segment illustrating a dream described by Saskia and later experienced by Rex, suggesting the hand of fate may have been triumphant after all. The color scheme is drab and subdued, befitting the bleak, psychological atmosphere of the script.

The performances are very good. Bervoets is outstanding in the Kafkaesque victim's role, illuminating the modus operandi of obsessive types. Johanna ter Steege has a brief but important role, because it is partly her attractiveness (in both looks and personality) that makes her loss gripping for both Rex and us. Ter Steege later appeared in Vincent and Theo (1990). I liked her enough in the present film to try, now, another film in which she appears. It is Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, however, who delivers the film's premiere performance, as the criminal with a mathematician's mentality. Donnadieu also appeared in The Return of Martin Guerre (1982).

Bottom-Line: The Criterion DVD provides a stellar transfer but the only extra is the theatrical trailer. An interview or commentary tract with director Sluizer would have been most welcome. It would have been interesting to hear his take on the reasons for this film's success in comparison to the disastrous remake. This film is riveting, creepy, and irresistible, precisely the qualities that one hopes for in a good psychological thriller. It is easy to identify with Rex's obsession with finding his missing lover, as many of us would react in a similar manner if we were to lose a loved one in such a manner.


*************************************************************************************************
You might want to check out these other excellent films from Netherlands:

Antonia’s Line
The Assault
Character
Soldier of Orange

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age